


every minute and every hour

by rowankhanna



Series: we can be heroes [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, But it gets happier I swear, Child Abuse, Comfort, Cuddling, Depression, Drama Production, Fluff, Fluffy, Frottage, Grinding, High School, High School AU, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, IT'S HAPPY I SWEAR JESUS, Kissing, Lots of kissing, M/M, Modern AU, Music, Musical Instruments, Musical References, Newt loves David Bowie, Newt plays music, Newt singing like a boss, Overdose, PLS BELIEVE, References to David Bowie, Suicide Attempt, There's a bit of really sad stuff but mostly just Newt being a bae, and after all this misery, breakdowns, credence being a sad bean, everyone is putting on a play, i swear it's cute, it's adorable i swear, lots of sad stuff with credence, mostly sunshine and rainbows, newt and credence listening to tunes together, newt playing piano at credence, no magic, this ship has my soul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 02:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9472172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowankhanna/pseuds/rowankhanna
Summary: Newt and Credence have to get on with their lives together, which means pain, insecurity, and flaws. But it also means love, kisses, piano playing, lunches by the oak tree, record players, and David Bowie.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thieves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thieves/gifts).



In the months succeeding Christmas, Newt and Credence see each other almost every day, whittling them away in a peaceful haze of shared hot cocoa and lunches spent on the bench at the very corner of the campus, under the big oak tree that always seems to be scattering leaves on their heads and that draws the wind that blusters their hair and rumples their clothes. Moments of tenderness aren’t scarce: in fact, Newt has a fondness for either tucking Credence’s hair behind his ear or ruffling it and giggling with childish amusement at the pink that tinges Credence’s cheeks when they touch, though despite the way they knock against each other with their gangly teenage limbs and clumsiness, they haven’t kissed again, or even addressed the matter of their relationship, if there was one beyond shared words at the bench and warm drinks bundled under scarves to stave off the heat and Newt’s lips on Credence’s forehead that make him feel like he both knows what home is and that he has one.

Tina finds herself immediately sickened by it, having been the first to know from a bubbling and bursting Credence that they’d kissed at all – he’d likely think it was just a dream had he not told her and if she didn’t tentatively remind him while squeezing his arm. Her sickness from their inability to address the issues manifests itself when the drama production begins to wisp itself together into audition posters, and she heads into the department, neatly writing down Credence’s name and phone number beneath _lighting_ under the technical crew requests, knowing full well that everybody who asks to get into the tech crew ends up somewhere in the crew, and also that Newt knows how to work the lighting system, remembering seeing his skinny frame tucked into the box behind the audience, watchful eyes crinkled with concentration, his hair clipped away and out of his attentive face.

Credence starts when his phone buzzes on his bedside table and he prays to the God he only half-believes in that Ma didn’t hear, with her ears like a bat, but if she did she says nothing, and he plucks it from the table, squinting at the screen of his ancient Nokia brick, his old reliable. _Congratulations! Welcome to the tech crew for this year’s summer drama show, Credence. You’re going to be the lighting apprentice this year. Rehearsals start on Tuesday right after school and last as long as they take (6pm for fussy parents). We’re very happy to have someone new on the production and Newt and Percy can’t recommend you enough. I hope you’re as good as they say you are. Regards, Sera Picquery_

Staring at the screen as if he’s not entirely sure it’s there, he reads it again, wondering if his brain could be interpreting these words wrongly. He shoots a text off to Newt – well, as fast as he can go when he has to painstakingly press numbers into the old-fashioned keypad. _Drama production??_ His heart is in his mouth, and the feeling is impossible to interrogate, impossible to pin down as either excitement or nervousness, though he vaguely knows that any feeling that comes with Newt is always something good.

 _?? You put your name down_. Newt’s reply is near-instant, on account of his infinitely better keyboard and his propensity for being on his phone to supplement his neverending blog writing.

_No I didnt_

_*didn’t_ , Newt corrects out of habit. It takes him a moment to recover from the flash of guilt that clouds his heart before he can pull himself together. _Your name was on the list. Welcome to the production, I suppose?_

 _Ma won’t let me, not after I didn’t come home on Christmas_. Credence shudders, an ugly montage of memories flashing through his mind: the cuts on his hands, on his back, on the backs of his thighs, deeper than before, the sound of Ma screaming at him for being such an insolent, useless, pathetic, Devil child. He hadn’t been allowed out without supervision until school had started again, and he had barely been able to speak a word when he got there until Newt had found him, put his arms around him, and told him that everything was going to be alright, and Credence had breathed in the smell of wet dog and cinnamon that came with Newt, and he believed him with every ounce of his being.

 _I’ll talk to Sera; she’ll sort it out_.

Her idea of sorting things out turns out to be accompanying Credence on his bus ride home in a group with Newt and Percy. They make a peculiar team: Credence, hunched over with his black hair and anxiety; Newt, with his chaotic half-ginger hair and awkward curiosity; Percy, who sits with an air of confidence as if he owns not only the bus, but the entire bus system of New York; and Seraphina (“but we all call her Sera,” Newt explains to Credence, absent-mindedly toying with the orange juice straw between his teeth), a rigidly straight girl with glasses who looks like she would tear Credence apart to get a good grade, all crowded round two pairs of purple-patterned seats. Newt keeps his hand close to Credence’s, running his thumb over it when he feels Credence tensing from worry, the action almost automatic in its gentleness.

“Ma is really insistent,” he says. “She’ll probably just refuse more.”

“I’m persuasive,” Sera replies, pushing her round glasses up her nose, her face a portrait of surprisingly mature authority. Credence finds her almost more terrifying than Percy – she has that kind of brewing control, the anger that bubbles beneath the surface and comes to a boil without explosion, but instead through words that come from between gritted teeth and that hold the weight of an ocean, even though she spends most of her time smiling. She reminds Credence of Matilda, if Matilda had been crossed somewhere along the line with Carrie. “Don’t worry. My parents are religious, too. I know how to deal with this.”

“Okay,” Credence mumbles, watching the streets pass by out the window, the bus rumbling along the cobbles, shopfronts humming along, a thousand lives behind their windows, his mind toying with sonder. “Ma is a slightly different type of religious.” He indicates for them to get up when the light in the bus changes, the unfiltered bright light graduating to smoggy dark as he heads to the front of the bus, leading his ragtag group, Newt shuffling in next to him, slightly less confident on his feet in the vehicle’s violent shaking back and forth.

“I didn’t expect this to turn into an outing,” he says softly. “Sorry.”

Credence gives him a small smile, the kind that he has to force at first but that becomes genuine when he looks back at Newt, sees the freckle-exploded face, like a Michelangelo come to life. “It’s okay. I need to get to know these people, right? Since we’ll all be working together.”

They hobble from the bus in a conglomerate, and while Credence tries to stay near to Newt to form natural pairs, Percy pushes in next to him, adjusting the scorpion badges on his collar. “You live out here?” he asks, eyeing Credence’s neck, from where he can see that his pendant is being worn, but the charm tucked under Credence’s shirt and out of sight, the cold metal pressed to his chest. “Bit of a different side to the city. Different from where he lives.” He gestures to Newt, who lives tucked in a corner of a pretty street, opposite a bakery that sells tiny cupcakes (“who are they for?” Credence asked, peering out the window when it snowed on Christmas. “Tiny people?” Newt suggested, rubbing Credence’s knotted shoulder and laughing into it like a pillow) and above a stationary shop that varies from bullet journal pens to quills so heavy Credence can’t even hold them between his fingers, never mind write with them.

“Yeah,” Credence replies quietly. “We’re... we don’t have a lot of money.”

He comes up to the church, where Modesty is playing hopscotch on a grid she drew outside, singing one of her songs about witches, the lyrics of which Credence has long forced himself to stop listening to, to ignore the chill in his heart the words instil. The air feels colder when he approaches, taut with the tensions of uncomfortable years, but while he slows in the fog of the atmosphere, Sera and Percy cut through it like a knife, Newt keeping to Credence’s side, slowing when he slows, but Credence has to step through them all and walks into the church first, bowing his head to Modesty as he does, the doors heavy under his hands. Ma always said they were heavy under the weight of his sin.

The church seems empty. Chastity is at the table, working with the press (she always did run for the bus, whereas Credence tripped over his feet on the way) and she looks up as he enters, eyeing the raft of visitors that tail him like ghosts. “Where’s Ma?”

“Upstairs,” she says tentatively.

“You seriously live here?” Percy asks, wandering between the slanting rafters. “This place is fucking inhospitable.” Chastity shoots him a glare and Credence flinches a little, but he’s heard swearing before – though not like the way Percy does it, spitting out the syllables as if they offend him as much as he means to offend the subject. “Do people know you live here? Do the government know? This is an absolute state. You can’t live here.”

“Graves,” Sera warns. He shoots back a look, but silences just in time to hear the clack of clogs down the stairs as Mary Lou emerges, casting them all with a glance that suggests she thinks that three devils have accompanied her son Satan into her home. “Mrs Barebone, I presume? My name is Seraphina Picquery. I’m the director of this summer’s drama production for the school, and we would be extremely interested in enlisting your son Credence’s help this year. We are rather low on stagehands, and he would be of great assistance to us.” Sera stands with her hands neatly linked together in a basket, her words clear and over-enounced with clicks of her ‘t’s, her expression unreadable through the lenses of her glasses, a perfectly held poker face. Mary Lou’s eyes fall upon Credence, who is staring holes into the floor, and also into the scuffed toes of Newt’s right boot and suppressing with all his might the urge to hold Newt’s hand and to melt into his form until they become indistinguishably connected and the worries of the world fade away from them. Sera takes a deep breath, one from her diaphragm that echoes round the empty hall like a gunshot, and continues: “We would require his assistance until the latest of six in the evening on Tuesdays after school, and his presence for both performances, dates yet to be confirmed, but likely in May or early June.”

“Would you now,” Mary Lou replies coolly, taking steps forward, sizing up Credence’s entourage. Percy holds his gaze, fierce, where Newt drops his, politely intimidated. “I suppose so. The boy could do with learning something useful from time to time.” She fixes him, catches him in her sights, and he feels the belt he knows he’s going to suffer later and shudders, but a moment later he feels Newt’s hand go for his and then catch itself and furl back up into a tight fist and he can’t help but feel like he’s being held, embraced, adored. “Would you care for some leaflets?” The question is rhetorical and she hands them out anyway, then ushers the group out, almost slamming the door behind them as she instructs Credence to see his guests off.

He almost collapses when the doors shut, the tension slamming through him and releasing like a beast through his mouth in a long exhalation as he stumbles a little, straight into Newt’s arms. “Oh, dear. She _is_ scary, isn’t she?” he says, helping Credence up, keeping a watchful eye on Modesty, who watches right back with eyes like a tarsier. He stuffs his leaflet into the depths of his pocket, where Pickett yelps at almost being crushed (“sorry,” Newt whispers) and then gives it a good chewing, the anti-witch sentiments disappearing between his exploring teeth.

“I told you I could do it,” Sera says proudly, moreso to Percy than anyone else, and she turns to Credence, smiling warmly at him, though with only a fraction of the joy Newt’s smile seems to lovingly express. “Welcome aboard, Mr Barebone.”

“Credence, please,” he corrects quietly, the sound of a surname like a slur in his ears.

“Newt will show you the ropes, as the last man left with any knowledge of how the lightning panel works and how to rig the system. If you need any extra help, ask Percy here.” She dips forward in what could be a bow, but is so stiffly short that he’s not sure, and she’s still holding the leaflet perfectly intact. “I look forward to seeing what you can bring to the table. Now, I’ve got a bus to catch.” She hurries off, clutching her violet messenger bag as she goes, chunky knit cardigan flowing like a cape in the breeze, her turban wobbly. Percy takes her absence to give Credence the kind of smirk that could eat him, whole as a great white shark as he shreds his leaflet between his hands.

“Coffee?” he asks.

“Buggeration, yes,” Newt heaves, using the absence of Modesty’s piercing glare to firmly take Credence’s hand, stinging the freshness of yesterday’s belt wounds. Credence can’t bring himself to mind. “That woman looked like she might eat me.”

They go to an independent place nearby that looks a little shabby with an ancient handpainted shop sign and peeling walls where the hot chocolate is like liquid gold and the tea is a swirling abyss of jasmine. Newt eats a pain au chocolat that crumbles between his fingers and Percy shares a delectable slice of cheesecake with Credence, who has never had any before and needs convinced that there is no actual cheese in the cake before he’ll even touch it and even then he eats shyly until the taste swallows him whole in tangy sweetness. He almost eats it with his hands, taken with his desperation for more.

“Um, Newt,” Credence pipes up in the middle of an intense discussion between Newt and Percy on why so many of the drama crew have such peculiar names: Newton, Percival, Seraphina, Queenie... “What play are we doing?”

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he replies. “Have you read it before? It’s quite a tricksy tale.” Credence shakes his head. “Well, to put it in as simple terms as possible, the fairy Puck ought not be trusted with matters of the heart, or indeed with love potions.” He lets Credence have the last of his snack, for which the boy is thankful beyond words for the treat, overjoyed to be eating so much chocolate. He loves chocolate almost as much as Newt himself, loves eating squares broken from Newt’s Dairy Milk bars (“the chocolate here in New York is awful,” Newt says all the time, but Credence doesn’t think so), loves drinking hot chocolate, loves eating slices of icing-thick cake when it’s the birthday of somebody generous. The best parts are when Newt doesn’t feel like eating the chocolate bars he packs for lunch and hands a whole one to Credence, who nibbles on it bit by bit over the course of the day, making it last as long as he can, never wanting to give up the experience.

“I would much rather see them do _Oliver!_ again,” Percy says, watching Newt’s face contort with pained shame. “Newt got a standing ovation for his performance back in middle school, then he chickened into backstage when he didn’t sound like a castrato anymore.”

“Percy,” Newt says, soft but harsh, a warning. Credence doesn’t know what castrato means, but he does know that it caused a visceral reaction in Newt, who seized up with discomfort, eyes darting side to side. He’s never seen Newt this nervy, not since they met. The idea of Newt singing confuses him, never mind singing on a stage full of people: he knows that Newt is like him, instinctively shy, more prone to hiding than to performing. It’s the opposite of his nature. “If we did do it again, I certainly wouldn’t be playing in it.”

“Shame.”

“I only did it because Theo convinced me to. I haven’t played in years now, besides. I’m not sure you could get a note out of me.” Newt slips a few crumbs into his pocket and Credence watches Pickett’s pink nose appear and disappear again, hearing the telltale squeaks of joy as the rat devours his leftovers, then he watches Newt smile adoringly at him, scratching between Pickett’s little ears. “I much prefer working backstage. Nobody ever knows you were there, and nobody knows who to blame if something goes wrong.”

“You were a natural on that stage.”

“Hardly,” Newt replies, blushing. “Don’t you remember that I almost tripped when entering?”

“And I _screeched_ several wrong notes in _You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two_. I think you’re excused.”

Credence watches the two of them talk over the table and he slides his hand into Newt’s, who doesn’t seem to notice, but reflexively smiles and squeezes back, and stands up to tightly embrace Credence when he leaves, pressing a kiss to his temple. Newt stays for another coffee; Percy accompanies Credence back to the church (“it’s en-route to home anyway,” he shrugs). They walk mostly in silence in the blackening streets, painted shadows criss-crossing across the pavement, flowing like fluid creatures, avoiding the ducking and dodging of Credence’s own. Half-blown lampposts and fluorescent light that pours from shops light the street, but only barely, the light bouncing back up from the rain-slick pavement, valiant in their attempts to fight off the night that begins to close in.

When Percy leaves Credence outside the lonely doors of the church, he leaves him with advice whispered in a tone that causes goosebumps to ripple across Credence’s skin, and he tugs his sleeves down to cover it. “You have to make the move on Newt, not wait for him to make the move on you.”

 

“Would you sing for me?”

Newt is in the rafters of the theatre in the middle of rigging a light when Credence asks him. He’s been thinking about Newt and Percy’s discussion of the age-old _Oliver!_ performance all week: of a younger Newt, short and bright and with a voice high enough to hit the ceiling, with his tufts of tangled gingering hair, dressed up in rags in various shades of brown, his freckled face clapped with eyeshadow dirt, but whenever he opens his mouth and captivates the audience, Credence’s imagination fuzzes. He can’t imagine Newt singing – sometimes he struggles to imagine Newt’s voice at all, so quiet when he speaks, the gentle slurring of his sibilance. He imagines everyone in the drama crew he’s seen so far at a young age – a little Percy, probably with his hair in that stereotypical black side fringe, straightened into oblivion, and wearing band T-shirts; Seraphina, with her round glasses and severe face, still projecting that air of authority; Jacob, stout and with his proud smile and propensity for sweets, handing them out like mints. Queenie wasn’t in school yet, being younger than Tina, but he can imagine her, too, with her unbelievably happy face and uncanny ability to read people, her spirit lighting up a room, her now bobbed hair in curling pigtails. But Newt. It’s always Newt he struggles with.

“Okay,” he says as he comes down the stepladder, which wobbles ominously beneath his feet. Credence holds it steady, but he worries he’s not strong enough: Newt would be, he knows. Newt looks like nothing, but his arms are solid, strong, with a grip like iron if he means it, not that he ever uses it for anything except dissections in biology. Credence always has to leave during dissections. “But just for you, mind. I wouldn’t do this for anybody else. I gave up singing a long time ago.”

He seats himself at the piano in the theatre. His fingers, calloused and coloured in browning shades of peach, set themselves on the keys with that kind of lift a real player has, and when he plays, he swings his triplets in true blues style, his hands alive with movement and music and his face breaking into the kind of euphoria that only musicians have, when they live in a world apart from everyone else. He looks at Credence, though, in moments where he flows, and laughs gently as he sings.

“ _I found out about her_  
Her name’s Mississippi Isabel  
She grows wild strawberries  
She’s made of ivory and pearl

 _To look at the universe_  
She’d abandoned the world  
I’d go with her to the darkness  
Abandon my life for this girl

 _I rode around on my bicycle_  
All the way in the rain  
She kissed me once, I took her out for lunch  
And she never kissed me again”

He comes off in a clash of keys as he laughs, Credence leaning on the helm of the grand piano, spellbound by Newt, by his spectacularly erratic playing and by the way it pulls him in, the way that his inexperience (or lack of playing) is bewitchingly charming, the gentleness of his voice and the way it wrapped Credence right up and lost him in the emotion of it all; he would give Newt his own standing ovation if he could convince himself to move.

“That was amazing,” breathes Credence.

“That was awful,” replies Newt, and he pauses. The air between them is electric and harmonious, like a little symphony in the space between. “Credence. I think I’m meant to kiss you right now. I don’t really know how relationship[s work. The last one I was in, I was slightly dragged along by the collar, but I have a feeling you wouldn’t appreciate that.”

“Just kiss me when you want to,” Credence says, twiddling his thumbs a little, too shy to be able to look at Newt anymore. “I... I like it.”

“Me too,” chirps Newt, and he pulls Credence down into his lap on the stool of the piano and kisses him, wrapping his arms around Credence and holding him tight. They’re both just as fumbling as before, neither entirely sure where they fit in the complicated jigsaw of their own limbs, but  they don’t mind, overjoyed to be in each other’s arms, to have somehow overcome their own fears of actually initiating contact beyond forehead kisses (though those are always on Newt’s part). “I’m sorry. I’m a little bad at this,” he says when they’ve pulled apart and settled, Credence on Newt’s lap and brushing a layer of dust from some of the black keys, overly aware that he’s a little too bit to actually fit, the two of them a gaggle of parts. “I don’t ever want to do anything you’re not comfortable with. Tina gave me a right dressing down for it, too. Said I should just get on with it. Yelled at me half the length of New York.”

“We should just get on with it,” Credence agrees, but he continues, “or maybe we’ll be stuck forever, since neither of us ever do anything.”

“That is a good point.” Newt knots his fingers at the nape of Credence’s neck; he doesn’t mean to keep touching it, but nothing feels much better than the grey stubble that grows back there in force, reinforcing into tiny tangles before they end up shaved back down into just a lining of the skin. Regardless of how long the hair there is, it feels satisfying under the pads of Newt’s fingers. The touch makes Credence feel a little like he’s flying.

The next month passes in a haze of peculiar vellichor and hours spent in the school theatre. Actual schoolwork disappears in Credence’s memory in favour of time better spent (though there is a crossover; he rather fondly enjoys an afternoon during which Newt tries unsuccessfully to teach him glycolysis). He is somehow taught to work the lighting system, a magnificent beast held in a cramped room that barely fits the two of them with wires hanging overhead and underfoot, bulked by at least three huge computer monitors and several panels that Credence can now navigate almost expertly, and while he and Newt manage somehow not to progress at all beyond kissing, he certainly feels happier, if such a thing were even possible. Tina occasionally joins them at lunch on their bench, sneaking Newt’s crisps right out of his hand to his equal amusement and irritation, though as a mother to plenty of animals, he unfortunately knows the feeling of stolen food too well. Credence even seems to receive less beatings than usual, his attempts to blend into the walls of the church working better than usual, even though he spends a little more time out than usual, dropping into Newt’s for a while sometimes before heading home and becoming a temporary perch for his lovebirds and parakeets and occasionally even Finn, Newt’s green-cheeked conure, his other birds kept on a more permanent basis in his labyrinth of ceiling-hung cages, but all that still seem to appreciate guests and a lap to sit on for the family cat, Cat Stevens (“you called your cat cat?” Credence asks, bewildered), appreciating every moment of being with Newt’s menagerie.

On a warm afternoon in April, Newt comes into school and Credence isn’t waiting for him. He gives allowances: Credence, as clockwork as he is, could’ve missed the bus. He might have an appointment. Maybe he has to speak to one of the teachers. Handing in coursework. Getting something to drink. Talking to Tina. Any number of things. Credence isn’t around at break, either, and Newt spends it in the library with a coffee-stained copy of _The Outsiders_ jammed between his thumb and four fingers, covertly making his way through a tub of Riesen chews, one of which is stolen by Jacob, who’s playing Puck and has cottoned on that the backstage crew are always eating something. Newt begins to feel alarm when Credence hasn’t turned up by lunch and he’s sitting on the bench alone, feet drawn up beneath him. He sends Credence a message: _Where are you?_ He would add more sentiment, but he knows that Mary Lou is prudent enough to check Credence’s phone and would definitely not appreciate finding out that her son has any kind of romantic partner, male or not. Maybe he’s ill, Newt reckons, but at the same time, he’s seen Credence in school at the same time as almost passing out from fever and knows that if Credence is ill, he just lies in the sick bay the entire day, usually attempting some form of schoolwork and almost always failing. He’s made more sick bay visits than he would like to admit; the nurse doesn’t even look twice when he walks in, just lets him past.

Tina comes and sits with him, Queenie flanking her on one side, looking almost overly jovial until she registers the souring look painting Newt’s features black. “Aww, are you okay, honey?” She moves and rests a hand on Newt’s knee. He looks back at her, mouth pulled tightly into a line. “I’m sure he’s fine. You’re worried about Credence, right?” He nods. “He’s a strong kid. I’m sure he’ll be back and right as rain soon.” She hands him a cracker, which is admittedly not the most recovering of foods, but he accepts it gratefully anyway, trying his best to eat despite the nauseating feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The next few days come and go with no sign of Credence. “What possible alternative metabolic pathways to make ATP exist?” Is he okay? Newt can’t help but worry, check his phone, going in and out of his messages with Credence obsessively to the point of doing it with one hand while writing notes with the other. “Newt.” He worries that Credence might be ill to the point of inability to move, or perhaps is being held by Mary Lou, and his imagination runs rampant there, remembering the fear she struck into his heart with only a look, remembering watching Pickett chew up the leaflets. “Alternative pathways. Newt.” And he misses Credence so much, misses being with him, misses eating lunch with him and wiping crumbs from his mouth and smiling until he smiles back and holding his hand when no-one is looking and he misses Credence’s stupid bowl cut and the feeling of his undercut and his dark eyes and the quiet richness of his expressions, lost in the vacancies of his wandering mind and he really, really misses the taste of Credence’s lips on his own, even if their kisses are scarce and choppy and they keep slamming into each other, all elbows and knocking knees and jerking shoulders. “Newton Artemis Fido fucking Scamander, get your head out your little round ass and give me a possible alternative metabolic pathway or so help me God I will have your head and serve it on a fucking platter.” Newt finally looks up and across the table into Percy’s eyes, which are equal parts exceedingly annoyed and amused and scrunch up as they close when Newt utters a “sorry, what?”. “Look, Newt, if I promise you that I’ll come with you to Credence’s after school on Friday if he’s still off, will you actually revise with me instead of staring into space?”

Newt sighs, rubbing the back of his neck, his fingers winding in overgrown clumps of hair. “Sorry, but – how can you tell it’s him I’m worried about?”

“It’s always him you’re worried about, Newt. Because you don’t worry about yourself. Worrying means you suffer twice; isn’t that what you said?” He nods. “But you worried about me, and you worry about him, and you’re definitely not worrying about me anymore.”

“I still worry about you.”

Percy looks up, startled, but Newt is chewing on a fingernail and he says nothing more to the effect of either Credence or Percy and simply says: “starch can be broken down into intermediates to provide alternative metabolic pathways for the production of ATP”. Percy looks down at his notes. Newt is word perfect. He sighs and reaches across the table, placing a hand on Newt’s shoulder and forcing the other boy to pay attention again as he looks up, his blue eyes a little wary, but comfortable in the way that he knows Percy and that being with Percy is like being at ease, all the weight on his shoulders instead of Newt’s.

“Are you eating?” he asks. He doesn’t even need to ask and he sighs, rummaging through his bag (a black leather messenger bag that, despite its years of service, still looks absolutely pristine) and tossing over a tub of BBQ Pringles. “For fuck’s sake, Newt. Is the ability even there in you to get your shit together? So goddamn flaky. No wonder I broke up with you.” Newt doesn’t look up as he unscrews the top of the can, eating the words up, swallowing them and letting them occupy him like a fortress, the burning sensation that felt like it was lighting all his nerve endings and crisping them away into nothingness when him and Percy had broken up returning like a hammer strike. True, he knew they were never really destined for much, a clashing chiaroscuro of personality and people, but he appreciated Percy’s arms around him after a hard day, the smell of his stupid cologne, the touch of his lips, and he also appreciates having Credence by his side, smiling incessantly, though with Credence he never feels so much like he’s about to be subtly insulted, one of Percy’s favourite talents.. “You’re not going to be of any use to him if you’ve given up now, right? Ass. Together. Get.” He hits the table with each word. “He’ll appreciate it. And if you don’t get all that shit together, well... _je te plumerai la tête_.”

Before school on the Friday morning, after checking that Credence is still definitely not there, Newt makes his way to the theatre, playing with the strap of his Fjallraven, scraping his bitten-short nail against the roughing fabric of his backpack as he steps into the darkness, brushing the dark aside with the well-practiced ease of a chronic insomniac. His feet move with grace, elegance, and he leaves his backpack by the stool as he takes a seat, keeping his back up straight as he rests his hands on the keys. He imagines Credence at the other end of the piano, the excitement in his eyes, the wonder, the reverence. Credence, who has given him back his senses. Credence, who has given him back the voice that croaked out from anxiety and shyness, the voice that rang out loud and clear and brought his brother right into his arms, crying out his amazement, crying out for Newt’s abilities, telling Newt that he was worth so much.

He pulls his music from his bag, lovingly handwritten, pencilled in and then out and then in again, tentative lines connecting quavers, question marks dotting the staves. The clavinova in his bedroom, once a simple gatherer of dust, a long-forgotten memory, had been blown apart by his practicing, the keys aching beneath his hands. He wanted Credence to hear this first, but Credence is not here, so it is what it is: an appeal, from Newt, to the air, to the stars and the galaxy and to the Gods that sit lazily atop the clouds, watching from their ineffable perches, an appeal for everything to be okay.

He plays.

“ _I find it hard to live this life of nouns and adjectives_  
While all around us planets shift and comets fly right by  
You’re the same way, I can see  
Come on, climb in my car with me  
I’ve got this new astronomy  
I’ve got to show someone

 _Halley’s comet only comes by once_  
Jump over the moon  
If your eyes are closed  
You won’t get the chance to see it soon  
Are you there?  
I’m there  
Oh are you there like I’m there, like I’m there?”

Newt, who starts on second verses and skips the last chorus because he doesn’t believe that songs end, stops playing long before the second last chorus, lifting his head to observe the small gathering of students in the corner, Jacob one of them, a rice cake suspended in front of his mouth, his eyes like saucers.

“Er,” he says.

Jacob drops his rice cake.

After spending at least ten minutes arguing over the number of Credence’s bus (“I’m telling you, I know him better, it’s the forty-three!” Newt insists, but Percy looks at him incredulously when he says this), they get on one and disappear through the city streets, bathed in capricious golden light that sometimes goes black like it might rain thunder upon their lowly heads, the clouds seeming to hang over the church, twisting in turmoil. Percy heads in first without a moment to lose where Newt would chew his bottom lip, hand hovering over the door for minutes on end before he could summon the momentary flight of door-opening courage. The scene is similar to the last: Chastity is at the table, shuffling leaflets together into neat and tidy piles bound with elastic bands to take out later, and she looks up, regarding the unlikely pair.

“You’re here for Credence, aren’t you?” she asks. Newt nods. “He’s in hospital.” She takes one glance at their expressions and feels the need to quietly interject. “He’ll be okay. He had a seizure; they said it was idiopathic, and they don’t think he’s going to have any more, but they’re keeping him in because he had two. Two seizures.”

“Oh, Merlin’s beard,” Newt whispers, one of his more unusual turns of phrase. Percy does not have such graciousness and exhales a “fuck, kid”, not even turning to watch when Newt goes bundling out of the door, the crashing of a tsunami, sprinting at full-pelt, and he has to come to a trundling stop by a lamppost, churning in breaths that curse his lungs, and he has to walk the rest of the way, wishing he could cut through the long blocks or that he had more than just one bus fare. He wants to see Credence, to hold him, he wants to know if Credence is really okay, wants to see if the light is still in his eyes, wants to sit by his side and he just wants Credence to be okay like nothing on Earth.

Finding Credence is a simple matter, and Newt’s thief’s luck comes in handy, as he manages to sneak in at a time where Mary Lou isn’t there. Credence is curled up on the bed, the frailty of his white bones even more apparent under the desaturated sheets, and he has black earbuds in his ears connected to an iPod nano held in his palm like a nugget of gold. He knocks them out of his ears and the iPod onto the mattress as he throws himself into Newt’s open embrace.

“I’m so sorry –” “You had a _seizure_? What happened? Are you okay? Are you going to have any more? You didn’t hit yourself on anything, did you? Oh, Credence...” Newt brushes his fingers through Credence’s hair, over and over, like a forest, and he can’t help himself but draw the boy in and kiss him, deeply, meaningfully, with all the pains of a week without him, with the ferocity that he’d channelled through the piano and through his voice, with all the desideration of his lacking heart.

Credence has to step away, his eyes shifting uncomfortably to the glass in the door, waiting for the inevitable appearance of Mary Lou and the evacuation of Newt with half of himself and the other half just wanting to rest his head in the crook of Newt’s neck, which he does anyway, reckoning with fool’s hope that he wouldn’t be beaten after going through two seizures, but they still pull apart in the end, Credence sitting back down on the rock-hard mattress and undoing the tangle of his earphones.

“What are you listening to?”

“Um... I think this is _The Clash_. It belonged to Doctor Moffat’s son and he gave it to me since his son didn’t use it anymore and I was bored.”

Newt raises an eyebrow and fishes his iPod, a war-beaten Classic that’s been with him for what feels like an eternity for both him and it, out of the pocket that isn’t full with Pickett. “Please, for the love of all that is holy, just borrow mine and listen to Ezra Furman,” he says, passing it over, the scratches that line its silver surface shining in the tinny artificial light. Credence stares at it for a while before he takes it, feeling as if he owns a part of Newt’s soul: a man can be read through his music, he thinks. “Have it for however long you want; I have music on my phone, anyway.” Credence takes a cursory scroll through the artists: Cat Stevens (typical), The Police, Bastille, Mark Ronson, Tears For Fears, Ryn Weaver, David Bowie... His music taste is perhaps as erratic as Newt himself.

He is indeed kicked out by Mary Lou when she returns, but when he is, he feels more contented: Credence is okay, even though his cheeks look a little more hollowed than usual (he puts this down to the hospital food), and he’s all there, and nothing has changed with him or them, and he’s fine, and he’s _absolutely fine_ , or so Newt tells his reclusive moggy Kitkat, who seems to take this with a pinch of salt, though he’s not sure whether this is her reaction or just the resting face of a cat, which always seems to hold elements of intense grumpiness and British cynicism, and he falls asleep there, lying by his bed, which Kitkat is curled up beneath, though she abandons him during the night, as cats always do, even if they’re Newt’s.

His weekend goes by in a succession of mostly lazy days: Saturday morning, while the sun streams through his blinds, he eats pancakes with one hand and reads _Eleanor and Park_ in the other. He doesn’t think he’s ever been able to just read a book without eating or occupying his free hand somehow, usually with his collection of stress balls or occasionally with a Rubik’s cube, which he has never once managed to solve, mostly because he never looks, and goes out to see Credence again, who says he’s being discharged as they eat in the café, which seems to exude surprising misery for a place of food.

“Are you ever not drinking something?” Credence asks curiously.

“No,” Newt replies. “I need to be hooked up to an IV permanently with some kind of hot drink filtering through. I can’t survive otherwise.” He’s eating a tub of vanilla ice cream with a tiny plastic spoon that almost snaps under the frozen pressure, and the openness in the way he sits and of his expression lose Credence in his face. Newt pauses, aware he is being stared at. “Yes?”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Thank you?” Thrown into a state of absolute confusion by the forwardness of Credence’s articulation, Newt cannot find any more words or any more actions in his repertoire, and sits in a stunned silence. It’s not like it’s the first time he’s heard the words – it’s not – but it’s the first time he’s heard them with such _meaning_. The last time, it was like skimming over the dictionary definitions; this time, it’s like it’s true, it’s like Newt is pleasing the senses, Credence’s sense of vision and his sense of touch. Newt awkwardly turns over the timepiece hanging from his neck, once, twice, three times: the hands read ten to two or something similar; he can’t read analogue upside down very well. “I – I would say you too, but I’m not sure beautiful is the right word. Maybe something like prepossessing. Or arresting.” The imaginary Tina sitting on Newt’s shoulder groans and pulls on the helix of his ear, stretching the cartilage.

Credence tells Newt not to come back tomorrow, because he won’t be in hospital tomorrow, and not to come to the church, because he probably won’t be allowed in, and he also tells Newt that he can’t guarantee when he’ll be back in school, which makes Newt’s heart sink a little, for as much as his friends and colleagues do their best to keep him amused (except perhaps Percy, who can pin Newt to the wall with so much as a look), they are not Credence. He can’t sink into Tina or kiss Queenie or adoringly feed Jacob (no, he only grudgingly feeds Jacob). Before he leaves, he buys Credence another bar of chocolate which makes him feel a little weak at the knees, the taste explosively ambrosian. 

Credence is thankfully back in school on the Monday and once the neverending day is over, Newt takes him out for a coffee (“how do you have the money for this?” he asks in wonder. “A very generous big brother,” Newt replies; Credence found Theo Scamander to be slightly terrifying at Christmas, but he trusts that he, like the rest of the family, has a warm heart). He takes Credence to one of his favourite shops, a little further out than usual and closer to his house, with a wide variety of fabric sofas in eccentric patterns. The walls are coated with a brown striped wallpaper and hung with exposed lightbulbs and a mixture of realist and impressionist paintings (Credence’s art history lessons catch up with him, and he easily recognises Monet’s _Luncheon on the Grass_ and Manet’s _A Bar at the Folies-Bergère_ ) and the occasional bookshelf with titles ranging from contemporary YA fiction to dusty hardback Dickens, a sign hung to a pin on one reading ‘feel free to read while in the shop’ in writing that bubbles and with circles floating over the ‘i’s instead of dots. An old and wearing brown piano sits in the corner, lid open and stool presenting itself, though it’s clear from the besmirched keys that it remains unplayed for a long time, and if one were to press one, the piano would both clunk and express an entirely out-of-tune note. While Credence expects the speakers neatly tucked away in the four corners of the cedar ceiling to be playing smooth jazz, they defy him in favour of what he recognises immediately from Newt’s iPod as Mark Ronson (out of the very corner of his ear, he hears Newt humming along: _but no-one ever does it like that anymore..._ ), and he sits down, Newt approaching a few minutes later with a black tray and ecru mugs that look like they’ve been drawn on with Sharpie, cartoon illustrations of small people professing hope, love, and rock ‘n’ roll. Credence isn’t sure he agrees on them with the last one, but accepts his cup and its spiralling layers of whipped cream topped with sprinkling cocoa. Newt sinks beside him into the pillows.

“Do you remember the first time we did this?” he asks, stirring his coffee which spins in sienna waves. Credence spoons some of the whipped cream up, trying to avoid toppling the carefully constructed tower and nods. “It was nice.”

“You saved my life.”

“Nothing of the sort,” Newt argues right away, placing Pickett on his lap, where the rat runs up and down the scratchy denim of his jeans before settling on the rip at his knee. “You were doing just fine.”

“Well, not really,” Credence replies, a little boldly, so much so that Newt looks up from running his finger along Pickett’s grey fur. “I wasn’t... always great. Sometimes I didn’t really want to speak at all and just wouldn’t for the whole day, and when Ma beat me before I met you it hurt so much more... I wasn’t always sure whether it was worth going on every day. Tina helped me, but when you came along it just made me feel like I could, like I _could_ go on and know there was something good always waiting for me.”

Newt pauses, digests this, and invites Credence in to lie rested against his shoulder, an arm draped around the other boy’s shoulders, thumb casually drifting backwards and forwards against the exposed skin of Credence’s neck, making him shiver a little under the tenderness of the touch. “I’m glad,” he mumbles, “that I could help you, Credence. That I could do all this for you.” He lifts Credence’s hand, cut with scars, some paled into cream and some still angry and ruby, a few closing, the colour of bricks, and he kisses the sore palm. Credence goes red as Newt lets his palm come back down to his side, Pickett taking the opportunity to nestle himself in the bowl of Credence’s hair. “And I’m glad that now you’re alright. Even if it’s just a little bit alright.”

“I think it might be a lot of alright,” he replies, and he smiles, tangling himself into Newt.

The months that pass until the performance of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ consist of many days of superlunary nothingness, days where nothing of particular note happens, but days where everything feels right. Credence, now a master of the lighting system, has made his way through various other departments of the production crew: he’s painted the set, become handy with a hot glue gun (his intense knowledge of clothes repair helps him here), learned the name of each and every item of Queenie’s makeup inventory to pass to her on request, and somehow acquired two copies of the script, neither of which are actually his. His ill health, an episode that neither he nor the doctors understand (Tina theorises it might’ve been as a result of stress), is not something that recurs, much to Newt’s peace of mind, though Newt’s peace is guaranteed with Credence by his side again in their well-loved routine of eating lunch together, meeting outside of class, even if it’s just brushing up against each other on their way across the corridors or Newt’s Fjallraven bumping against Credence’s offbrand and falling apart backpack, both in states of absolute disrepair, though neither boy would have them any other way.

The performance takes place at the end of May, the twenty-sixth, with a second on the twenty-seventh. Newt and Jacob bring in two bags of food for each performance, one of which is stashed in the lighting box besides Credence, leaving him with a stream of visitors that definitely aren’t for him. He wonders what would happen if he were to hide the bag, but decides not to: almost everybody who comes up for food looks dead on their feet, even Newt when he clambers into the box, his forehead slick with sweat. “Hey,” he says, taking the seat next to Credence and producing a stash of Hershey’s Kisses from his pocket. “These are absolutely disgusting. Do you want one?”

Credence takes one. “Why are they pink?”

“They only had the _it’s a girl_ variety. The cashier was looking at me a bit funny.” He chortles and checks the light settings Credence has recorded. “So, that’s the props team sorted; they can do without me. The show is in...” He checks his watch, a peculiar shape and made of wood. “One hour.” They spend half an hour playing music through the sound system until people start arriving, at which point Newt grabs the bag of sweets and dispenses it round the backstage crew. Credence follows him round, watching the unfolding chaos: Percy is sitting on a table, Queenie expertly applying something to his eyebrows that make them look absolutely frightful, Jacob’s Puck costume is coming apart at the seams (“who the _hell_ measured this?!”), two actors that Credence doesn’t recognise are arguing over the pronunciation of Hermia, and people are running around back and forth incessantly. Newt pauses to say something to a boy Credence recognises as Abernathy, who is blustering under the gale force wind of Newt’s tone and he scurries off. “I leave them alone for two seconds and they’re falling apart,” he says to Credence as they approach Queenie and Percy. “Anything for you, madame?”

“Oh, you’re too sweet, Newtie! You got any jelly beans?”

Percy raises a painted eyebrow. “And I don’t get anything?”

“Don’t think I didn’t hear about your little actor dinner party, Percy,” Newt replies coyly. “You’re well-fed, while I’ll have you know that we’ve been here for hours. Is Tina coming?”

“You betcha,” Queenie replies, brows coming in to the most reserved of furrows as she sweeps some brown onto Percy’s crease. “She’s very excited, but you didn’t hear that from me.” She giggles. “You too better be off before Sera catches you here.”

They return to their cave, the rows of seats in front of them filling out with people. Credence is still making his way through his collection of Kisses when the show starts, and he mostly sits back, letting Newt work, though their work mostly consists of pressing buttons, pulling levers, and sliding sliders. His face screws up with focus but he moves like it’s a dance, well-practiced, choreographed to perfection, every shift of his arm calculated within an inch of its life. Credence is captivated entirely: by Newt, by the players on the stage, by Percy as Theseus, Jacob as Puck, the jokes that should fly over his head but that seem to make sense through their mouths. He’s lost in the set design, in the costumes that don’t look as stapled as they are, by the intricate makeup that lines everybody’s features. He sits in vacant wonderment during the interval, eating Peanut Butter Cups now, the experience washing over him, soaking him in sheer happiness.

When Newt pulls the curtains, he grabs Credence’s hand and they barrel across the backstage and into a hundred pairs of arms, warm and inviting and even he is swept into the group hug, feeling like he might be a part of something finally, and a part of something good. Jacob gives him a thumbs up across the circle, and Sera congratulations Credence on his hard work, telling him that she’s glad they persisted in him joining the team. Tina almost throws herself into his arms.

“You did it, Credence!” she yells over the similar gushes of delight. “I’m so proud of you. You’ve grown up so much since Christmas. I’m so glad.” She looks like a firecracker, like a Catherine wheel, like the lights on the Christmas tree in Newt’s house, all wound round and shining different colours and in different frequencies and intensities.

“Tina,” he says into the comfort of her ear. “Sometimes I don’t feel okay, even when I’m with Newt and most of the time he makes me feel great. Is that... is that normal?”

“That’s normal,” she says softly, “and it happens to everybody. But how do you feel now?”

“Like everything,” he says back.

“Then that’s okay.” She turns round to hug and congratulate Newt, who looks a little taken aback by the contact, having previously been speaking to Percy, who he always does his best to stand quite a ways from, but much like Credence, he settles into it. “You two did _so well_! It was so good!” She continues to congratulate them for a few minutes, unable to stop herself, and affections are passed from person to person, but when Percy asks Newt and Credence if they want to come out for the clean afterparty (“the drinks,” he says, “come tomorrow”), but they exchange a glance between them and Newt reaches out for Credence’s hand.

“No thanks,” he says. “We’re alright.”

The city moves beneath them like it’s not there anymore, warm with the sunshine long given over to the night, light spilling out from neon signs and glossy TV screens and from shopfronts of places that should be closed in the emptying streets. Newt knows where to go, the best places to be in the night, the bench in the park where the children play in the day and where the world shines beautifully in the starscape of the sky and they wrap into each other like presents, coat beneath coat and skin to skin, but only on the first night. On the second night they bypass the city, the delicate streets that they cross like a tempest, all knees and feet and boots and beating hearts and float straight into Newt’s house, Credence’s feet disappearing up his staircase, marred with piles of books and shoes and baskets for the braver of pets. They duck beneath the cages of birds singing lullabies, past the lines of newly anointed fairy lights and into Newt’s bed, always unmade, Credence pushed into a curled corner of duvet, but he feels like he’s being pushed beyond, beneath, beyond the bricks of the house and beyond the city streets and beyond the skyline and the stars and he feels like he's there, in the ineffable realms, Newt’s mouth like honey, like ambrosia.

They run wild without hesitation, fuelled by adrenaline, by the screams of joy that come when months of work come to beautiful, beautiful fruition, by the glory that bubbles beneath their skin, by the electricity they generate. Newt’s hair, coming out at all strands and beyond chaos, brushes against Credence’s chest where it’s exposed with the loosening of his shirt buttons and it leaves him shuddering, grasping against the other boy’s shoulders. Newt hooks himself in, mouth dropping kisses against the back of Credence’s neck like it’s all he can do as their legs tangle, their bodies thrumming with the rising of pleasure between them and he goes breathless when he crashes into Credence like a tidal wave, grinding into him, wound around him. Through several layers of fabric they touch, but it’s so close and Credence digs his nails in, a mess of hot breath and barely concealed euphoria as he tightens up, chest constricting. It feels like he’s being built up from nothing, like the statue of David, and he feels the fire that begins to burn within him, moaning gently into Newt’s ear.

“Credence,” he gasps like a prayer, a blessing, and they’re coming together, disappearing into each other, community in the way they move without anticipation or warning, jerking, only working to facilitate the pleasure that runs riot between them, something entirely its own celestial being and then it hits so suddenly, hard. Newt opens his mouth and lets out a half-strangled breath that sounds calmer than the turbulence whirling in his stomach, wild and untameable and Credence seizes up, whispering Newt’s name over and over as he arcs, wonderfully, unable to stop himself throwing his head back as it feels like the entire jigsaw of existence and meaning comes into place for the briefest of moments, and then he’s back down and drops back against the mattress, Newt on top of him, looking at him like he’s _incredible_ , and then he just smiles and lays himself down.

“You’re amazing,” Newt whispers. “Like everything at once.”

“You’re a symphony,” Credence replies. “Everything about you fits so perfectly.” He takes Newt’s hand, winding their fingers like he always does, and lifts them, watching where the joints of their fingers touch and where they don’t, but push across the space to meet. “I’m so happy,” he says, and then he rolls over and goes to sleep, dreaming of a very stunning freckled face that knows nothing but joy.

Newt wakes first, of course. Newt has no such thing as sleeping habits and he stretches out, careful not to brush too hard against Credence, who is curled up in a tight ball tucked into his chest. He runs his thumb in circles against the nape of Credence’s neck and then kisses his forehead as carefully as he can, listening to the creaking of the stairs under someone’s feet – he ventures a guess for the steps as being those of his brother, and as the door slowly opens and a crop of blond hair appears, his suspicions are confirmed.

“Company?” Theo asks quietly.

“Yes,” Newt nods, reddening a little, but Theo just shrugs.

“Should I tell Mum to make some extra breakfast, then?” he asks, placing a cup of tea on the bedside table, cluttered with books and a lamp that doesn’t work anymore, gathering a thin cover of dust. The cup is plain white and modern, but it’s placed on an ornate, gold-trimmed floral saucer.

“Please.” Theo nods and disappears back downstairs, closing the door behind him, the trigger that finally causes something to stir in Credence, his eyelids fluttering like butterflies and his sculpted lips moving, opening in a tremendous yawn as he moves, realises that his arm has come into contact with someone else, and opens his eyes, his memories of the previous day clicking into place as he realises that this comfy bed that moves to fit his shape is not his. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

As Newt sips his tea, Credence gets up and cracks his stiff joints, bidding good morning to the birds in the cages by the romance bookshelf, a separate entity hidden away in the corner of the room, a source of Newt’s embarrassment, though Credence always yearns to read them, to discover the love stories of those who aren’t him and those in his English class assigned books, which never seem to be particularly romantic in the first place (he shivers at the thought of _Madame Bovary_ ). Newt offers him a sip of tea, so he takes it, instructing Credence to open the door as Cat Stevens comes scraping at it, jumping right into Newt’s lap and curling up, purring aggressively at him.

“Have breakfast with us,” Newt invites, and Credence knows that he can’t refuse and wouldn’t want to anyway, so he smiles and says that there’s nothing he’d rather do.

Newt lightly sets down his cup, as if he might hurt it by setting it down too hard. “Before we go downstairs,” he says, “we should probably, ah... clean ourselves up. Feel free to use the shower.” Credence nods and wanders along to the bathroom: he’s been here before, stared holes into the mirror, wondered how he could look so much more alive in this mirror than the one at home, and he almost _has_ to shower, feeling dirty from the inside out, even though he knows that last night was nothing but absolutely perfect. He dresses himself again, though certain items are unsalvageable, even to his ability, and he steps back through into Newt’s room, where his partner has changed into a Rushmore T-shirt, a grey cardigan, and skinny jeans that fit him nowhere and is holding Cat Stevens, face buried in the cat’s ecstatically ginger fur. He smiles when Credence comes in. “Hello,” he says. “I forgot to ask, do you want to borrow anything, any clothes? Just, yours might be a little dirty...”

“Ma would ask questions,” replies Credence, but he appreciates the thought anyway, thinking fondly of Newt’s scarf, a present to Credence, though he shudders when he remembers its tragic fate: to be burned in a fire to the rhythm of Mary Lou’s screams. Newt hadn’t been angry, but had placed an arm round Credence and asked him if he was okay over and over again until the words didn’t feel real under their tongues anymore. “When is breakfast?”

“Someone will come to call,” Newt assures him, though that’s not what Credence needs assured about.

“Ma...”

“Can go screw herself with a broomstick, frankly,” Newt replies, his voice surprisingly mellow for his sentiment. “For all she’s done to you. It’s not fair.” He steps up to Credence, lets him stroke Cat Stevens’s thick fur, in varying shades of auburn highlighted with the occasional blond highlight, until the cat decides he’s fed up of this and wraps around Newt’s shoulders like a snood.

Theo does indeed come to call them for breakfast, and he’s just as intimidating as Credence remembers him: despite Credence being particularly tall, Theo towers over him, and he has a sharpness to his features where Newt’s just blend into each other, his cheekbones like knives. If it weren’t for the way they looked at each other, Credence almost wouldn’t believe they were related at all. Newt’s mother is there, and she likes Credence and he likes her: she’s plump, with a kindly face and messy hair always tied up in a bun, and much like her son, always offers Credence food when he’s over. She’s made a full breakfast with crispy bacon, sizzling brown sausages, very scrambled eggs, fried mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, and toast with butter.

“The Full Monty for our wonderful son,” she says when they take their seats at the table, every seat lined with a large and bouncy pillow. “I’m sorry we couldn’t come, darling. But I heard it was _fabulous_. Were you involved, Credence, dear?”

“We worked together,” Newt replies, taking a sip of coffee (“honestly,” his mother tuts, “a coffee drinker, in our family”). “He put together all the lighting settings. I just pressed the buttons.”

“Congratulations, dear,” she says to him. “A well-deserved breakfast for the both of you, then. Will you be staying?”

“No,” Credence replies, trying to figure out how to eat the bacon, which is as hard as a brick, black and crisp and unmoving under the pressure of his cutlery. “I have to get back home. But thank you for the warm welcome.” Newt leans over to help him, his slight frame belying his uncanny strength. The breakfast, when he manages to eat it, is delicious and scrumptious and he thinks that he might die at the table from the taste, but he can’t eat it all: it’s immense, like climbing a mountain, and he leaves about three-quarters of the meal behind. Newt leaves about half. Theo and Mrs Scamander have both entirely devoured the breakfast.

“Too much chocolate again,” Theo chastises as he clears the plates. “Spending too much time with Kowalski, are you? I remember him handing out sweets back in _Oliver!_ ; he’s incorrigible. We told him to stop, but alas, I raided the pockets of the street children, and what did I find?”

“A lot of chocolate,” Newt replies, producing a Peanut Butter Cup from his pocket and unwrapping it.

“Paracelsus, Newt. I’m surprised you stay so skinny with that diet.”

 “Walking the dogs and being mostly unable to sleep help with that,” he says, popping it in his mouth. Credence can’t stay, so Newt grabs his longcoat (“isn’t it a bit warm for that?” “it’s never too warm for this coat”) and walks him home. It’s not a short walk, and Credence would usually go by bus, but the streets are warm and humid and Newt’s hand is extremely inviting. The morning streets are nice: they’re quieter, relaxed, lazy, less traffic rushing by. Newt takes one of the dogs with him, Frank; when Credence asks why he doesn’t see them so often, Newt simply replies that they’re Theo’s pets, not his.

“Then why doesn’t he take them out for walks?”

“Because he doesn’t eat half a ton of chocolate every day. And he doesn’t like walking.”

“And you do?”

“Better than staying indoors all day.”

Newt leaves Credence a few blocks away and hugs him tight. “It was nice having you over,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll forget this weekend anytime soon.” Credence smiles a little, not really wanting to leave, but he takes a small step away. “I’ll see you on Monday. Don’t forget the Biology test.”

“Don’t remind me of it,” Credence teases, and turns around, slumping away across the rest of the blocks, practically unable to wait for the coming round of Monday.

The chance is obvious to Newt. Credence is shaking when he arrives in at school and he almost trips straight into Newt, eyes shining with tears. “Hey. Hey. Credence. What’s wrong?” He places an arm around the other boy, who is shaking so hard that for a brief moment Newt wonders if he might be having a seizure, letting his body function as a lean.

“It hurts,” he whispers, voice wobbling, “it hurts everywhere.”

“Was it – was it your mother?”

Credence says nothing, which functions as the only answer Newt needs. He broils. How _dare_ she. How dare she hurt her own son, who has done absolutely nothing wrong? Newt has never seen Credence be anything but kind, anything but thoughtful and inquisitive; if he has any faults, they’re only those created by his abuse, or his absolute inability to seem to understand cellular respiration (which, in all fairness, Newt also struggles with).

“Come on. We should get you to the nurse.”

“No. I can’t – we can’t – they’ll find out...”

Newt wants to scream at him, to tell him that they should find out, that he shouldn’t have to suffer like this, but he doesn’t want to betray Credence or to hurt him in any way, so he sits Credence down in one of the ‘resting areas’ and takes his First Aid Kit from the depths of his Fjallraven, where it’s tucked into a pocket usually blocked by his History folder, doing his best to patch up Credence’s hands, and they move to the bathroom so that Newt can wrap bandages around Credence’s chest. He hums as he does so, trying to keep him somewhat at ease: “ _You know, I’ll be free; just like that bluebird; now, ain’t that just like me?_ ”

Credence can barely do up the buttons of his shirt and so Newt does them up on his behalf, letting Credence sink into him as the bell for first period rings. “Are you going?” he asks. Credence shakes his head. “Okay. Neither am I.”

“You go.”

“No.”

They remain like that for about ten minutes before Credence pulls himself up off the floor and stumbles back through to the rest area, where he sits for the rest of the period, pushed close to Newt, relying on the heat that radiates from him in waves, but he clambers away to second. Newt can barely pay attention to English, sketching pencil circles on _Tess of the D’urbervilles_ ; at break time, Jacob comes up to him as he stands waiting for Credence, who has Math, and offers him a racuchy, which Newt accepts thankfully.

“You alright?” Jacob asks. “You look –” he gesticulates wildly, “a bit down.”

“I’m quite alright, thank you, Jacob.” Newt tries to give him a reassuring smile, though if the smile reflects anything from him, it’s not that he’s particularly alright.

“You need anything, you talk to me. Pastries make everything feel better.” Jacob gives Newt a slightly awkward pat on the back, if only because most of Newt’s back is taken up by the fabric of his backpack, stuffed full, bursting out at all sides, a few holes beginning to form where the sharp edges of binder folders poke through. Newt smiles down at him, a genuine smile, a smile of gladness that people are there for him. He’d never really had anybody for him before, except Percy.

“Thank you. I think I might take you up on that offer sometime.” Newt straightens up and fuses to Credence’s side as the boy emerges from the classroom, wearing the same weary faces as the nineteen or other souls who have also just had to suffer a lesson of logarithms, but with something behind it, something awful. Newt is tempted to find Jacob and retrieve another racuchy for Credence, but Jacob has disappeared elsewhere in the building, so he offers Credence the half left of his.

“No thanks,” Credence murmurs.

“Eat it,” Newt replies. It’s an instruction, but a loose one, one that doesn’t really have to be followed; more of a guideline, but Credence follows that guideline and sighs, taking the pancake-like pastry and taking a bite, surprised by its taste, strong and coated with powdered sugar. It makes him feel a little better, lifts some of the shadow behind his eyelids, but he still can’t help himself but feel like he’s being crushed as he sits out on the grass with Newt and Tina, who quickfire questions at each other like quavers.

The test does not go well for Credence. Newt tries his best, but his eyes constantly flick up to watch his friend, who barely seems to be able to look at the paper, and ultimately doesn’t finish the last question, a slightly monstrous essay on a process he can neither pronounce nor completely recall. They sit in silence at lunch, Credence’s head rested on Newt’s shoulder as he neglects to eat, occasionally having to eat anything that Newt stuffs in his mouth, insisting that he has to otherwise his blood glucose levels will drop and he will feel awful and unwell, and when school is out he walks Credence to his bus stop.

“I hope you feel better soon,” he says, smoothing down the arms of Credence’s jacket. “Call me if you need anything. I’m always here.”

Credence pulls him into a hug, tight, not wanting to let go, and Newt has to prise him away when the bus rumbles around the corner, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“Please call me if you have to, even if it’s at night, because I’ll probably be awake already,” Newt says gently, and he watches Credence board the bus before he sighs, tucks his hands into his pockets, and makes for home.

The month that follows is an awful one. For all the beatings Credence missed, the ones he receives are twice as hard, and often he’s lashed right on top of open wounds, or ones so freshly closing that they reopen and bleed, and then for bleeding he is flogged again until he can barely move for the pain. Newt wraps him with bandages almost every day, plasters his hands up, buys him ointments from the drugstore to try and treat the cuts and the gashes, and despite the constant presence of his friend, Credence can’t stay out anymore except for band practice because he knows that the repercussions will be too great and even Newt can’t make the world feel like it isn’t grey.

Everything crushes him like boulders. The happiness he had felt in Newt’s arms, when Newt smiled at him, when he had been with him and Tina, laughing together on the bench at lunch, eating each other’s food like a free-for-all – gone. All of it, gone. Everything, numb.

The first day of summer vacation for Newt is spent holed up in his room with his clavinova, practicing again. Credence still has his iPod, so he listens to everything through his phone, and he thinks of Credence when he plays, thinking so hard that his whole hand comes crashing down into an accidental cluster. Theo comes up halfway through the day, when Newt is lying back on his bed, for once made, and when his face is stained with his tears.

“It’s Credence, isn’t it?” he asks. Newt nods. “Do you want some tea?” He nods again, and Theo comes up minutes later with a steaming hot cup, taking a seat in Newt’s desk chair. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” says Newt.

“Do you want to talk about Bastille’s new single?”

“Oh, I could talk about it all day.”

Newt doesn’t get to sleep until early morning and is woken mid-afternoon by the sound of his phone vibrating, loud and angry against the wood of his desk. Nobody ever calls him. He reaches out, sees the name _Credence_ on the screen and flies up into a sitting position as he answers, running a hand through his hair, eyes widening. “Hey. What’s up?”

The tone of Credence’s voice sends shivers up his spine. “H-hey, Newt. I – I’m really cold. I’m sore. I think I might puke. H-hey, do you know that I love you?” Newt grabs his shoes and pulls them onto his feet, his phone tucked up to his ear by his shoulder as he frantically ties his laces.

“What did you do, Credence?”

“I – I took a lot of pills.”

“Oh, by Paracelsus.” Newt bundles out of his bedroom, thundering down to the stairs, grabbing his coat on the way. “Theo! _Theseus!_ Theseus, please, call 911, he’s taken an overdose – Credence, he’s overdosing!” Theo somehow moves almost faster than Newt, appearing next to him in an instant and grabbing his car keys, bundling the two of them into the car and driving, taking Newt’s directions and wishing he could speed up, but trying to enforce the speed limit. He hasn’t called an ambulance, but he tells Newt that he will when they’re there, so he can get the address and report on Credence’s condition.

Newt almost runs into the church, finding it all empty except for Credence, who is sitting on the edge of a seat by the big table, crying and shaking, looking as if he might have another seizure, twitching all over. “Oh, Credence. Oh God. Oh God. Come on, now, Credence. Stay with me. I love you.” He has to almost drag Credence into the bathroom, where he flings up the lid and the seat, and it’s a good thing he does, as Credence is sick straight away, trembling all over as he does, retching with a surprising amount of force. Theo appears to tell Newt that an ambulance is on its way and he waits outside the bathroom, listening woefully to his brother crying and telling Credence, who isn’t listening, that he’s going to be alright and that help is on its way. He’s only ever seen Newt anywhere near this bad once before, and remembering it is something he’d rather not do, but this is so much worse because he can hear in all the wobbles and inflections of his tone that he’s breaking into parts. Lots of them, like shards of a mirror, blood on his fist.

“Why did you do it, Credence?” he asks somewhere between his muffled sobs.

He shrugs where he sits slumped over the toilet. “It all hurts so much.”

Newt isn’t allowed to ride in the ambulance when it arrives, though he is assured by the paramedics that Credence should be alright (he notes the _should_ with slight revulsion) and Theo drives him to the hospital, Newt hanging out the passenger seat as he places frantic calls – one to his parents, to tell them where he is; one to Tina, to tell her the situation; and a final one to Percy that cuts through his frenzy as he asks Percy to make the inevitable visit to the Barebone family.

“Newt,” he says, steady in all the ways that Newt isn’t, “calm down. Credence needs that from you now. I know you’re going to be shitting a brick, because I can tell that you are, but if he’s in the kind of place where he’s overdosed, he needs some kind of calm in his life, and you’ve been good for him so far. Stay strong for him. Don’t be a fuckface.”

“Thank you, Percy. I’m in bits over here and your choice advice is ‘don’t be a fuckface’.” Theo casts a wary glance over to Newt.

“It’s good advice,” says Percy.  “I’ll go tell his family. I’m sure they’ll care deeply, and I’m sure they’ll be absolutely thrilled to find you there first.”

“I’ll deal with it when it happens,” Newt replies, rubbing his forehead with his thumb, pressing hard against his skin. “Percy... Tell me everything’s going to be alright.”

“You know that’s not necessarily going to be true.”

“I just want to hear it.”

He can almost hear the roll of Percy’s eyes. “If someone had told me that this was what would happen after fucking you, I don’t think I would’ve. But I probably would’ve anyway. Everything is going to be alright.”

Newt smiles despite himself. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The hospital is just as horrible and clammy as Newt remembers it to be, and Theo walks with him (“what, you think I’m going to leave you on your own looking like you’ve just watched Marley and Me?”). They’re not allowed to see Credence for a while, and Newt and Theo are both asked again if they know anything about what Credence took or when, and answer that they don’t know. Tina arrives first, out of breath, her clothes all rumpled and she throws herself into Newt’s arms right away.

“Are you okay?” she demands, wiping his tears away (he’s not so much crying as occasionally his eyes reflect his soul).

“I’ll be okay if he’s okay.”

It’s a long time before anyone else arrives and the trio wait in the uncomfortable plastic chairs of the hospital, and Newt spends the entire time with his feet up on the chair, staring listlessly out into the waiting room. Tina occasionally tries to rouse him into speaking, but he never really answers properly, trying instead to suppress the feelings that bubble inside him, trying not to address the black hole he feels inside. He wants to be good for Credence. He doesn’t want to be the mess he is, was, might always be.

Eventually, he’s let in to see Credence, who is in and out of consciousness and constantly monitored by nurses. Newt can’t be told anything, but in one of Credence’s states of awareness, he makes a confession that he doesn’t know what he overdosed on, just emptied the medicine tin and took everything he could find, and he’s sick a few more times when Mary Lou arrives, skirted by Percy.

“Get out,” she says to Newt and Tina. Theo is outside, getting coffee for the three of them.

“No,” Newt replies. “He came to me. I’m going to stay here, because he wants me here.” Tina stands by his side, fixing Mary Lou with a glare almost as steely as Newt’s own: a genuine glare of absolute hatred, unveiled, pure, open. More than disdain or resentment or anything that Tina has seen before, and with a kind of fire that even Percy hasn’t seen in Newt.

Mary Lou gives in. Newt gives her and Credence’s sisters the chairs and sits on the floor, on top of his coat, Tina and Percy flanking him on either side, like some sort of strike. As ever, Credence stirs, and when he does he asks for Newt. Theo doesn’t sit with them, as there’s no room for him anymore, but gives up his coffee to Percy, whose shoulder Newt is resting his head on, and Percy is running his fingers through Newt’s chaotic curls almost out of fallen-out habit.

“Hey, Newt,” Tina says. He looks up, blue eyes unfocused and a little hazy, his head not entirely back in the room. “Have you got any chocolate?”

“I always have chocolate,” he replies, rummaging in the inner pockets of his coat and tossing a packet of M&M’s over to her, and he catches Modesty’s longing glance and very elegantly pitches her a Butterfinger bar. “Share it,” he says, nodding to Chastity. Mary Lou looks like she might kill him with just a glance, but Newt is quite immune to her now, on Credence’s behalf.

A nurse peers her head in at the congregation. “He probably won’t wake up for a long time yet. You should come back in tomorrow,” she advises. Mary Lou takes the choice to leave, and Newt instantly bundles into the chair she’s abandoned, but he stops her on her way out.

“Ms Barebone,” he says, “would you like to give me your number so that I can call you when he wakes up?”

“No thank you,” she replies and steps out, Chastity and Modesty trailing her, though Modesty looks back at Newt before she goes, and almost smiles at him.

The nurse is right: it’s a very long time before Credence wakes up properly. Newt spends most of it dozing, and Theo brings him some books and his school bag, which contains most of his forms of portable entertainment, and Newt whittles away the hours with sleeping. Percy eventually leaves him after a few hours.

“Call me if you need me back,” he says, ruffling Newt’s hair.

Newt is in the middle of a verse of _Everybody Wants to Rule The World_ when Credence wakes up properly and promptly pukes straight into a bucket. He looks up at Newt. “Sorry. That was... that was really gross.”

“I’ve seen worse.”

They sit in an awkward silence as Credence sits himself up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m really sorry. It had nothing to do with you, I promise. Everything just felt too much.”

“I know.” (Newt knows, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling tremendously guilty). “You could’ve asked me for help.”

“What could you have done?” Newt goes quiet at this. Credence sighs and rubs his eyes, wincing as he irritates some of the cuts on his hands, though his hands are entirely bandaged up, presumably by the doctors. “Will you sing me something?”

“What do you want me to sing?”

“Anything you want me to hear.”

“ _Watching through my fingers_  
Watching through my fingers  
In my thoughts you’re far away  
And you are whistling a melody  
Whistling a melody  
Crystallizing clear as day  
Oh I can picture you so easily  
Picture you so easily

_What’s gonna be left of the world if you’re not in it?  
What’s gonna be left of the world? Oh_

_Every minute and every hour_  
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more  
Every stumble and each misfire  
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more”

He sits back. “Well?”

Credence smiles. “It was pretty. You’re – pretty.” Newt blushes and laughs a little, as best he can. “Oh, Newt, why was Percy here earlier? I didn’t think he would care.”

Newt pauses and scratches his chin, feeling like this is a story he shouldn’t recount, but doesn’t want to lie. “About a year or so ago, we went out with each other. It was never fated to last very long, but it was nice enough, and we like to pretend we don’t care about each other, but we do.” He takes another pause. “Don’t worry about it, though. We didn’t make a good couple at all, and we both know, so he’s not about to run off with me.”

“Okay,” says Credence. “It seemed unlike him.”

“He’d still drop everything to come and help me out. I would do the same, but he never seems to have any trouble with anything.” Newt is pushed out for some regular checks and Credence has a drip installed, which he doesn’t enjoy much and looks at warily. When he’s allowed back in, Newt looks out the window, a small affair with condensed glass. It’s dark outside. He should probably be home. “Please don’t ever do this again, Credence. Promise me.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Please.”

“I’ll try my best,” he amends.

The summer holidays whip by in a rush. The Barebones are separated and rehomed, but thankfully, Credence is still in New York, and somehow closer to school than before, living with the MacBrides, a very cheerful Scottish couple who he struggles to understand verbally and who have a biological child, a redheaded boy of about eight called Hamish who finds Credence utterly fascinating, and neither of them mind Newt constantly visiting.

“Is he your boyfriend?” Mrs MacBride asks (Credence can’t seem to call her anything else) after Newt has visited for the umpteenth time, wearing a dopey smile. “He is _so polite_. I swear, Hamish’s friends are all a bunch of absolute twats.”

Credence is still bewildered by her interesting use of language, but he nods. “I... I think so.”

“You think so?”

“We’ve never said it. But we spend all our time together and we’ve kissed, so... I think so.”

“I think that counts,” Mrs MacBride says patiently. “I would hope so, anyway. I don’t know what the deal with relationships is nowadays. Teenagers are a bunch of fucking messes, I tell you.”

At some point in the final week of summer break, Newt turns up at the door for his usual visit, looking slightly windblown (even without wind, he seems to achieve this look effortlessly) and holding two takeaway Costa cups. “Hello, Mrs MacBride,” he says politely, smiling up at her. He certainly likes her more than Mary Lou Barebone: Kirsty MacBride is tall, ginger, has her nose pierced five times, and gives Newt a high-five every time he comes in.

“What do I keep telling you two? My name is Kirsty. Use it.” She steps aside to let him in. “I think it’d be too much to assume that that coffee is for me?”

“Sorry, Mrs Mac- er, Kirsty. Treat for Credence.”

“Bugger gets all the good food, does he?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Well, you two have fun, and watch out for Hamish. He’s lingering in the hallway.”

Newt is indeed ambushed on his way to Credence’s room by the little ginger boy, whose hair is sticking out in ridiculous angles, as ever. “Hi, Newt!” he yelps. “Have you brought Pickett?”

“Hello, Hamish. No, he’s not with me today; he’s a little unwell.” Newt dips respectfully and shoves past Hamish before the boy can bother him, as is his favourite pastime, and knocks on Credence’s door even though he knows he doesn’t have to as he steps inside. Credence’s room is bare of any distinguishing features: he has a bed, a window, curtains, a mirror, a wardrobe, a desk, some chests of drawers. He’s lying on his bed and staring up at the ceiling and turns his head to watch Newt come in. “Hello.” He lays the cups on the desk. “I brought coffee.”

“Thank you,” says Credence, swinging his feet over the edge of the bed and sitting up to let Newt kiss his forehead.

“How are you feeling?” Newt asks, taking a seat next to Credence and sipping his coffee.

“A little bad.”

“Just a little?”

“Just a little.”

“And you’re still going to therapy?”

“I’m fine,” Credence insists.

“Sorry.” Newt passes him his cup. “You know I spend all my worrying on you.” This causes Credence to snort, enlivened, taking a sip of hot chocolate and smiling into the cup. He’s always torn between being thankful and feeling particularly awful, and Newt is a break from those feelings, because he’s Newt, alive and smiling and all elbows and knees and freckles, and Credence still finds himself longing for him, even when he knows that Newt is just a phone call or a few blocks’ walk away. “Oh, I got a new iPod – someone was giving theirs away – so you can have mine. Permanently. Which I think you were going to do anyway.”

“I wanted to give it back,” Credence admits, “but I like the music. I wanted to keep listening to it.” He pauses. “Some of it.”

Newt tries to raise an eyebrow, but he’s no Percy and raises them both. “What didn’t you like?”

“David Bowie.”

“David Bowie!” Newt clutches his chest in feign injury. “You don’t like David Bowie! Merlin’s beard, who _are_ you?” Credence frowns at him. “Dear oh dear. I think I may need to teach you some culture.” Newt swings over to Credence’s laptop, such a thing of new beauty that it boots up within almost a second of being switched on, and he leaves Credence to sift through Google’s image search results of David Bowie.

“His eyes are different colours,” is what Credence says first, and then a pause, and then, “what is he wearing?” and after that, “I’m still not sure I get it.”

“He’s a cultural icon.” Newt takes another sip of coffee. “Maybe he’s too British for you. I’m sure Mrs MacBride gets it.” He switches Credence’s laptop back off.

“I had a doctor’s appointment,” Credence says. “They think I might’ve had those seizures a few months ago from stress. And they said I’m going to have permanent scars, but I already knew that. They said they think I’m going to be okay.” He looks up at Newt, who is looking back at him, and he blushes, looking away and to his empty bookcase. “I... I think so, too.”

“Of course you are,” Newt replies, patting his shoulder. “I believe in you.”

Credence smiles and nuzzles into Newt, who is particularly comfortable as he’s wearing a fuzzy brown cardigan and they fall so naturally into an embrace, Newt playing with Credence’s growing undercut, Credence just inhaling the slightly peculiar smell of wet dog radiating from Newt. “Oh, um, Newt. I can kind of tell why you like most of your music, but... Queen?”

Newt sucks in a breath. “Well, Credence, dear, let me tell you a story about a man born in 1946 by the name of Farrokh Bulsara...”

He stays the night and eats dinner with the MacBrides, who quite agree with him that both David Bowie and Freddie Mercury are legendary figures, and when he and Credence retreat back to Credence’s bedroom (Hamish watches them go and looks at his mother with intense confusion when he sees Newt go in for Credence’s neck at the end of the corridor; she just pats him on the head and laughs), he plays as much of his favourite music as he can to Credence, trying to force him to understand the appeal of British culture’s more peculiar aspects, and when he’s in the bathroom washing his face, he finds himself singing _Starman_ almost automatically.

“ _Let the children use it, let the children use it, let all the children boogie_...”

As Newt exits the bathroom on his way back to Credence, he is interrupted very pointedly by Hamish. Newt has to bite his lip to stop himself continuing to sing as the boy points a finger at him. “Are you in love with my new brother?”

Newt blinks back at him, wondering what on Earth has brought this on. He tries to smile, feeling a little arrested by this sudden interrogation. “Yes. I always have been. Is there something wrong with that?”

Hamish pokes him. “Well... well, you better make sure he’s okay.” He makes a half-turn, but then faces Newt again. “Will you be my new brother? And will you bring all your pets with you?”

“Maybe one day. But be warned: I sing Adele.”

Hamish, still British enough to know who she is, scrunches his face up. “Ew!” With a very playful smile, Newt escapes by stepping into Credence’s bedroom, where his boyfriend (can he call him that? It seems somewhat flippant) is already asleep, somehow lulled by the Soft Cell he’s playing, taking his cues from Newt. Newt runs his fingers through Credence’s lengthening fringe and kisses his forehead, arranging himself on the floor and plugging his earphones into his phone, himself taken to sleep by Lady Gaga’s _Joanne_ (he would never admit he loves it, but it’s one of his favourite albums).

He walks to school when it starts again with Percy, something that is surprisingly rare despite the fact they live on the same street. Despite both of them being eighteen and Percy already looking old enough to make it into bars, he somehow seems taller and older, his face fuller and his frown lines already coming to more prominence (Newt rolls his eyes at this).

“How’s he doing?” Percy asks, lighting a cigarette as they turn a corner. “I’m placing my bets on that you haven’t gotten any further as a couple and are still standing at a red light.” He holds out a hand. “My money, Scamander.”

“Unlike you, Percy, I respect people with mental illness and don’t tell them to cheer up,” Newt replies, though neither of them are particularly launching blows and neither of them mean anything. They both speak so jovially that anybody who tuned into their conversation would be utterly baffled. He rubs his nose. “Does frottage count?”

“Christ on a three-wheeled bicycle, Newt. You even know your _terminology_.”

“If school has taught me anything, it’s the value of research.”

“And by research do you mean Urban Dictionary?”

“No, I mean Wikipedia. It has very educational diagrams. And it cites its sources.”

They arrive about five minutes before Credence’s usual time of arrival, followed quickly by Tina, Queenie, and Jacob, who brings candy bars called Prince Polo from Poland, and Newt takes an instant liking to them, though Percy refuses to eat it at all and Tina makes a face when she eats it. They all turn in a Mexican wave of movement when Credence comes through the door and he looks up in surprise at all the attention focused on him. Newt has seen the changes in him as Newt has been visiting, but to everyone else’s he’s a new man: hair that isn’t quite as severely cut, fuller features, clothes that aren’t badly-fitting shirts and blazers, Percy’s necklace on show, and besides that, none of them have seen him since he was in hospital.

Queenie totters up to him in her kitten heels and throws herself right into him. “Hey, doll!” she squeals. “You look so much better!”

“Thank you,” he says, a little bewildered as he steps into his little welcoming committee.

“Congratulations on not being dead,” says Percy, which earns him an elbow in the side from Tina and a slightly scornful look from Newt, who couldn’t manage truly scornful unless he ever saw Mary Lou Barebone again. “Ready for another half year of setting up a bunch of lights?”

He’s welcomed back with more hugs and his own Prince Polo bar and he sighs with relief. Everything feels normal. He’d worried that, since the rest of his life had undergone such a drastic change, that school wouldn’t be the same, but everything is the same: Percy annoying everyone but Newt, Tina trying to force Credence to talk about his problems, Queenie being adoringly lovingly, and Newt being Newt, a boy who varies between staring into space like it’s a very wonderful thing and staring at Credence like he’s heaven and also walking into things.

A few weeks into term, Credence comes face-to-face with a poster slapped on his favourite oak tree for the school talent show and takes it down as Newt arrives, a little late from fetching his results from his English test and singing something about being head over heels. He shows it to Newt. “Will they make us do the lights for that?”

“Well, I won’t be,” Newt says, sitting down and rummaging in his beloved Fjallraven for his lunchbox. “Sera came and bothered me after Jacob told her I was a good singer. I got caught playing the piano while you were off and I accidentally ended up with a fan club, so now I’m playing.”

“Really?” Credence’s eyes widen, and then soften. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear that. Can we pull the lights orange on you so that everything looks a little warmer?”

“As long as I don’t look like an Oompa Loompa playing piano.”

“And please don’t play David Bowie.”

Newt sighs.

Credence visits him again for the first time since moving. He doesn’t particularly remember turning up to Newt’s when he was unwell, though by the look Theo gives him, he remembers. He halfheartedly claps one of the dogs on his way up the stairs, and is joined by Cat Stevens. _Wonderwall_ is playing, but not from Newt’s speakers and instead coming from downstairs. If Credence thought about it too hard, he’d think that the whole Scamander family had a thing for music. He steps through the door and the bedroom doesn’t look too much like how he remembers it – furniture has been shifted, posters re-posted, the walls painted – but it almost looks homelier, a little more room to move between the cages on the floor and those hanging from the ceiling. Newt’s leather spiralbound notebook inscribed with his initials is lying on his desk, but on top of it sits Credence’s Christmas present to him, another notebook featuring different kinds of birds, and he still wears the necklace Credence gave him every day, unable to resist turning it over in his hands when they’re not otherwise occupied.

“Newt?”

The boy in question is currently saying hello to his extremely green lovebirds Poppy and Marlow, with Pickett seated comfortably on his head. He turns around. “Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“What on Earth are you thanking me for?” he chuckles, leaning down to scratch at Cat Stevens’s scruff.

“Everything.”

“There is absolutely no need to thank me for anything, Credence. When you do something because you care about it, it doesn’t need thanks. It’s its own reward.”

“Am I – a reward?”

“No. You’re my – what’s the term now? – significant other. Very significant.” Newt straightens himself and turns around. “You know, that’s the term proposed instead of boyfriend or girlfriend, but really, it doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement. Why have _other_ in there? Why emphasise a difference?”

“Maybe it’s short for other half.”

“Significant other half.” Newt laughs – mostly at himself, and at Credence’s beautiful face, and he pulls Credence in for a hug, a warm hug, tender and sweet like the dozens of candy bars that had passed hands between them. “There’s nobody else I’d rather have as the other half of me.” He pauses. “Wait.”

Credence smiles at him – Newt is his own special breed of mildly dopey – and sits down, peering at the corner of Newt’s room, which was once empty, and is now the holding cell for a mint green electric guitar and a Fender amplifier. “You got a guitar?”

“Trying to expand my musical repertoire. It gets a bit dull playing only piano.”

Credence pulls his knees up and idly picks at the fabric of his trousers. “Are you thinking of doing anything with music after school?”

“No. In fact, I’d like to work in a zoo. But I suppose I could play on the side.”

“I think music runs in your veins,” says Credence.

“You think?”

Newt looks at the lazy clouds scudding by out the window wistfully. “Maybe.” One of his birds lets out a particularly ecstatic melody at this, and he laughs softly. “You too, Titus?” Credence reaches up and pulls on Newt’s hand, hoisting him down onto the bed so that he can kiss him up and down, in the quiet compartments of his spotted neck and up to his collecting gingering stubble (not that he seems to grow much of it). He reminds Credence of the way hot chocolate makes him feel: the rising warmth in his belly, the way he feels so at peace when he drinks it, calmed by the sweetness (and Newt’s skin; that, too, is sweet, like gobstoppers in glass jars in sweet shops). He winds their fingers together.

“Do you know why lovebirds are called lovebirds?” asks Newt.

“No,” breathes Credence.

“Because they have incredibly deep bonds with each other. They mate for life, sit together, miss each other when they’re gone, feed each other. It’s theorised that they may even have inspired Valentine’s day.”

Credence smiles, nuzzling Newt.

He wants to ask a question (carnally). He doesn’t know if Newt will like this question. He doesn’t know if _he’ll_ like this question once his id has passed it through his lips.

“Newt,” he says, and then he looks away, even though he’s still joined to Newt like they’re conjoined, “have you ever... you know... had sex?”

The surprise on his face is evident at the question when Credence takes snatching glances at him, but he doesn’t seem offended – there’s no hurt that Credence had worried he would inflict, not that he would know why. It’s a slightly probing question.

Newt sucks in a breath. “Yes.”

“What was it like?”

He tilts his head to the side as he speaks, letting Credence rest his own in the open crook of Newt’s neck. “Uncomfortable. But also entirely incredible. It’s like touching the stars, and then it’s like you’re touching someone’s soul – it’s so intimate that just being there could make you breathless.” He rubs the small of Credence’s back. “Why? Interested?”

“N-no,” he says, wishing he could rewind time and retract his own question (even though he really was curious). “Just... just wondered. I don’t think I’m ready for that. I felt like I was selling my soul last time, and that was nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing,” Newt replies. “It was something. Something quite special.”

Credence almost cries at this. “It was like being alive.”

Two weeks before the talent show, Newt takes Credence to the pictures for their Studio Ghibli weekend, to _Howl’s Moving Castle_ (Newt’s favourite). He buys Credence so much popcorn that it’s almost a tower and he himself is stocked with chocolate buttons and strawberry milk that almost always gives him a little moustache that Credence holds himself personally responsible for wiping away lest Newt embarrass himself in public, a view that is soon lost when he finds himself tearing up at the ending. Newt sniffs.

“That was beautiful,” says Credence.

“I know,” says Newt, and then he turns to Credence, ignoring the throngs of people around them, and kisses him.

The week of the talent show rolls around – Credence had almost forgotten it, so invested in the beginnings of the winter drama production – almost entirely uneventfully. Newt seems entirely unbothered by the fact he’s performing in front of almost the entire school more than once, and both Percy and Sera are at the soundcheck with him (even though Sera doesn’t go to school anymore, too old, she can’t help herself but come back to lend a hand), helping adjust the reverb on the piano and on his own microphone, and as they wait for the next act to arrive, they sit on the edge of the stage together.

“I’m glad you’re performing again,” says Percy. “You’re most of the school’s talent all wrapped up in one. You and Theo both.”

Newt snorts. “I’m just playing a piano, Percy. Don’t get so excited. I hardly sound like the little boy who played Oliver Twist anymore.”

“So I noticed.” Checking that there aren’t any teachers around, he lights a sneaky cigarette. “Is this all for Credence? Does he matter to you that much?”

“He does, but it’s not all for him. I think maybe I caught myself in a trap of not branching out in my playing, and he certainly got me back into singing. Then I remembered that I could sing more than just ballads and musicals. I could sing songs I meant.”

“You mean that you want to rule the world?”

“No, I just mean that I love Tears For Fears.”

Newt is the first act on. Queenie ruffles his hair expertly, biting her lip in concentration as she somehow fluffs it up even higher than usual, spraying it down with more hairspray than Newt has ever had near him before. Tina and Jacob try to motivate him, to egg him on, Jacob reminding him how good he sounded and how he has a fanclub, and Tina just reminding Newt not to be scared. Newt smiles at her vacantly.

“Why would I be scared? If you worry, you suffer twice.”

Credence is not with him, instead sitting in the lighting box and chewing on his thumbnail. He wishes he could be with Newt, be reassuring him, watch him get ready, but this is his job and he takes it seriously.

His breath catches in his throat when Newt steps out and sits at the piano, back straight, hands on the keys like they’re an extension of him. Newt leans forward, speaking into the microphone.

“Hello,” he says. “I’m Newt, and I’m opening this frankly wonderful show tonight. Thank you all for coming.” He pauses – he catches Credence’s eye and has to compose himself again – and then looks down, continuing. “I’m performing this to all of you, of course, but this set is for someone in particular. Someone very special to me, who I met at Christmas, and who has changed and improved my life ever since. I would like to dedicate this set to him, because I love him with all of my heart and I wish for nothing more than for him to be happy.” He looks down at the piano, up at his sheet music, and he takes a deep breath, one so deep that Credence takes it, too.

“ _I, I will be king_  
And you, you will be queen  
Though nothing, will drive them away  
We can beat them, just for one day  
We can be heroes, just for one day”

And it feels like home, like the sun and the stars and like touching them, and Credence feels like everything all at once, and he feels interconnected even though there are meters and meters and boxes and glass and chairs between them, and he looks at Newt and he hears him sing and he hears his heart, and Credence Barebone thinks that truly everything is going to be absolutely great, because he feels _alive_.

**Author's Note:**

> OK THIS SERIES IS MY ACTUAL BABY AND I AM SO HAPPY TO BE PUBLISHING THIS CHAPTER!! I really, REALLY love Crewt, and I really enjoyed having Crewt listening to music together and Newt playing music and being generally lovely. So I decided it couldn't end here. Oh no. There's more. This is my passion project. I love this.
> 
> Watch this space! And thank you for reading! Hit me up on tumblr @newtscamanderisms!


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